


Buffy as the Girl and the Slayer

by LittleRaven



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Gen, Meta, Meta Essay, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:41:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23422597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/pseuds/LittleRaven
Summary: Some thoughts during a rewatch of the last three episodes of season five, on Buffy's struggle to balance her whole self.
Kudos: 4
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	Buffy as the Girl and the Slayer

**Author's Note:**

> This was posted on my Tumblr in the year 2018. The title was invented for posting here.

“Weight of the World” is a refutation of Spike’s “death wish” speech in “Fool for Love.” Buffy will die, but not of that. Hitting the point of self-destruction, of giving up, she returns before it can come to pass. She dies for love. Season five presents “death is your art, you make it with your hands” and “love will lead you to your gift; death is your gift” as alternatives. The first time Buffy hears the second, she mistakes it for the first, but then she understands. Slayers aren’t just killers who get sick of it one day and want to be killed right back. The Slayer and the human can be reconciled.

The conclusion she arrives at is only temporary though. It’s not enough; that’s why she has to come back. Death, even a sacrificial one based on her ability to love, can’t be the only answer to the Slayer versus human, do I walk in this world or not dilemma. Buffy has to live with it. To live in this world, to connect with it. That’s what’s human in the Buffyverse. She has to come back, and make the potentials Slayers, so no girl will be alone in the dark again.


End file.
